Bankruptcy

Saving Your Home

Here’s an article from the Washington Post about strategies to keep your home. While I’m all for consumers having all the information they can, I caution readers about making “deals with the devil” - a renegotiation of a mortgage that can’t possibly work in the long term, simply to stave off what seems inevitable (foreclosure). I’ve heard stories of lenders stringing along homeowners desperate to work something out, only to tell them at the last minute that no deal could be reached, and of different departments within the same servicer not knowing what each other is doing, such that no deal can possibly be worked out. Even if your lender doesn’t engage in such practices or isn’t hampered by this kind of poor internal communication, you have to remember its only goal: to make money for its shareholders.

Take a page from the lender’s book: be that aggressively committed to your own protection. And don’t overlook bankruptcy as an option. A Chapter 13 offers the same prevention of foreclosure proceedings but on a more level playing field, and with the guidance of an attorney, that playing field might even be truly level.

© 2007 SC Bankruptcy & Consumer Law Blog.